Lured by unholy appetite, I failed to get to bed last evening after finishing with T.V. It was probably after 12:45 a.m. before I was to bed.

My youngest step-son Poté had been away when I first engaged the sordid occupation, but he had returned with his girlfriend, and the twain had gone to bed well ahead of me.

I correctly assessed that I had self-destructed my chances of having a fruitful day today, and that there would not be the shopping expedition I had entertained hopes of.

I remained abed throughout the night, and sought as much sleep as was possible for me without wasting too much of my morning. I think that it was something like 7:42 a.m. when I finally checked the time and decided to get myself up.

At least I was home alone.

I put another day's allotted effort at content compilation into the old Siam-Longings post that I have been editing for well over a week. I should have the task completed and published tomorrow.

The day has been lightly overcast, with poorer weather to come before the arrival of the weekend.

I hadn't heard how the riding (Surrey - Green Timbers) I live in fared in yesterday's provincial election, so I researched it online. It was a comfort to find that the candidate for whom I voted had solidly won, even if the party who won power in the province was not the one I wanted to emerge victorious ─ yet again.

I was further comforted that the riding candidate I had voted for ─ as had likely my younger brother Mark ─ did not require the probable uncast votes of my wife and her two sons.

Her eldest son Tho must have had a short day at work today, for he showed up during the noon-hour.

My low spirits from last night's ill conduct have probably contributed to the low physical ebb I have been afflicted with today. Soon after Tho was home, I sought a nap, and was back in bed for over an hour, most definitely gaining some needed further sleep.

I rose to find Tho gone. Perhaps he had only hiked over to the gym he uses not more than four blocks distant.

I wish to leave this description of my unremarkable day with a photo from last Fall, taken when my wife Jack charged up the cost of a trip back to Thailand to see her mother again for the first time since early March 2013.

I will just describe the photo with the description that I used in the Google album where I have the image filed:

The photo was probably taken on November 19, 2016.

My wife Jack is wearing the sunglasses, and posed beside her old friend Diasha.

This 'picnic' is being held either in the large village of Nong Soong, or somewhere very near to it; or possibly even in the city of Udon Thani.

Nong Soong is no more than about a 15-minute drive from Udon Thani, and is my wife's and Daisha's home village.

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So many people take calcium supplementation in one form or another in the hope that it will prevent osteoporosis, and help them to have a more reliable bone structure as they go through their later years.

Unfortunately, calcium does not seem to be the mineral people should be focusing on for any of this.

I eat lots of natural peanut butter, but I have never (insofar as I can remember) tasted Marmite. I don't even know if I have ever even seen a container of the product in a store or someone's possession.

Unfortunately for peanut butter lovers, Marmite had a far superior beneficial effect upon the human brain in a study that the following reports tell about:

Check out the effort the FDA had to have put in just to come up with the material it used in this letter to a company backing vitamin C products: The Vitamin C Foundation 4/17/17.

The FDA is expending its time and resources on witch hunts of virtually harmless advertising such as they charge the Vitamin C Foundation with ─ and just what do vitamin C products cost, anyway?

Yet the Pharmaceutical Industry can charge the amounts that they do (as revealed in the HSIonline.com report) for the poisons that they come up with, while the public is not to be able to read of potential safer alternate helps?

I don't know if a cancer patient would exclusively stock up on nothing but vitamin C and other health-related products in a bid to confront his or her cancer, but deadly and exorbitant cancer medications are not the only game in town, and they should not be promoted as if they are.

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My wife Jack phoned me early this afternoon to asked me to do an online transfer of some money from our chequing account into her personal account because she was at that very moment walking to a bank to deal with one or more "bills."

It was actually nice to hear from her, and gave me a bit of a lift.

Tho never did return after his disappearance during my midday nap, and it is 5:31 p.m. as I type these words. He must have hooked up with his girlfriend.

I am going to close out today's post now with a journal entry from 41 years ago when I was 26 years old, and living in a basement housekeeping unit in New Westminster.

This was to be my fourth day working full-time on what may have been a three- or four-month contract with a New Westminster charitable organization called S.A.N.E. (Self Aid Never Ends) that today calls itself Fraserside Community Services Society.

I had worked for them for many months in the past, but only on a part-time basis of a day per week. I had been a swamper on their blue pick-up truck.

However, thus far, I was stuck with absolutely no defined duties, and time was weighing crushingly heavy upon me ─ one or two other fellows found themselves in the same fix.

Back then, S.A.N.E. was located in one of a strip of old buildings on Carnarvon Street ─ they were right about where the New Westminster SkyTrain Station now opens up onto that same street.

MONDAY, May 10, 1976

A very gloomy day outside.

Just short of 5:45 a.m. the landlady's creaking floorboards snapped me out of a stirring fantasy love scene, complete with passionate music, a violent river, and grassy shore bathed in sunlight where I heroically lay with an increasingly less unwilling girl in my arms, struggling with her and pouring out a torrent of such rich verbage d'amour it could all only have been a dream.

My eyes are really tired; I didn't get enough sleep any day this weekend. But looking back on it, I have to say that I had a good time. Fellowship with Bill & mother is far preferable to the tedium of being alone here.

I see I must go to work in the rain.

At lunch I came home with 2 quarts of yogurt for Wednesday, and I had a vegetable & fruit feed. I guess it's going to rain all day.

There is still nothing to do in the shop. How the day drags! Hopefully I may only be confronted with 2 more.

I decided for exercise I would foot it to mom's this evening, leaving about 6:15 p.m.

A couple times I nearly turned back. But I made it, arriving 7:45 p.m.; mom got home at 8:00 p.m.

For mail I had some stamp notices, and an ad for a travelling bag from Dryden House of Ontario.

I left for home about 8:30 p.m., feeling very lonesome and loving toward mom ─ indeed, all those I hold dear. It is the prospect of my job that affects me that way. I only hope Wednesday is my last day.

Anyway, my walk both ways was under a clearing sky. Bed about 10:35 p.m.

I had spent much of the weekend in the company of my old friend William Alan Gill, and often his mother Anne Gregory was involved. Bill was renting a bachelor suite that may not have been much farther than four blocks from my room.

The two quarts of yogurt I bought during my lunch break from S.A.N.E. was to take over to Bill's suite Wednesday evening ─ we were to watch the Western Lottery draw. I had so much hope that I would win a major cash prize and finally be able to turn my empty life around.

The walk to my mother Irene Dorosh's home that evening was no light undertaking. She and her husband Alex lived in the Kennedy Heights area of Surrey; and just to get there would take 1½ hours of fast-paced hiking from my room. Their little home no longer exists, but its address was 12106 - 90th Avenue. It was my main mailing address.

I did not have much mail there at all. The stamp notices were from the Canadian post office announcing the latest commemorative offerings.

I was only there for about 45 minutes that evening before starting the long, lonely walk back to my room in town. The night would have made it seem even lonelier, even if I was not oppressed with the gloom of the 'go-nowhere' job I had that made me feel insignificant and worthless.

Leaving the social and emotional comfort of my mother must have been hard on me ─ nothing lay ahead for me that evening but total solitude.